PLUG frequently asked questions

What is PLUG?

PLUG is a next-generation framework for building business-ready, blockchain-based products and services. The PLUG framework allows you to build blockchains that can interact with:

Other blockchains

Existing systems

The PLUG mainnet is a network that provides a disintermediation layer between blockchain-based services, allowing them to interact with identity, value, and information across the boundaries of individual blockchain networks.

What have you learned from Bitcoin, Ethereum and other public blockchains?

Our team has been involved in blockchain for almost eight years at this point, and we have been very closely involved in public blockchains since then. The first lines in the PLUG codebase were written after seeing an early Bitcoin adopter try to build a turn-based game on blockchain using the Bitcoin codebase, and seeing it wasn’t fit for purpose for building anything more flexible than the original Bitcoin protocol.

Similarly, we see the issues with trying to create a new programming language, Solidity, for Ethereum and have taken to heart the security, usability, and scalability issues that initial decision has caused the larger Ethereum project.

Are you ready for production? Will it be worth the wait?

For certain types of application, we’re production ready. It’s been a long time coming, but the benefits we’re seeing from a performance and integrations standpoint is now paying off in spades. There are applications that are more mission critical that we aren’t ready to go into production for yet, but those are still coming fast.

Would you describe PLUG as a high performance blockchain? Why?

Absolutely. We were the first high performance blockchain, achieving mid-5 and low-6 figure Transaction per Second (TPS) figures as early as mid-2015.

How did you manage to build such a scalable blockchain framework?

We more or less just concentrated on distilling blockchain technology down to its minimum, constituent parts

How easy is it to integrate legacy systems with PLUG?

We’ve found it to be relatively easy to integrate most legacy systems our customers have with PLUG. Rather than requiring an existing system to change to meet the blockchain paradigm, we acknowledge that blockchain technology won’t be adopted unless the blockchain layer natively integrates with what already exists.

What are the advantages of PLUG from a DevOps standpoint?

Unlike other blockchain platforms, PLUG is localised to its owners infrastructure and deploys like traditional software. DevOps will therefore not have to deploy a PLUG network any differently than they would other services like PostgreSQL or Nginx.

How easy is it to develop smart contracts for PLUG?

PLUG defines an interface to provide business specific behaviours, invokable by users. This interface, called Transforms, requires developers to implement two functions per Transform: a verify function that checks the inputs are valid against the state of the network, and an apply function that will cause changes to the data stored in chain.

What industries has PLUG been used in?

Government, Capital Markets, Luxury Goods, Pharmaceuticals, and the list goes on. PLUG is increasingly used by a wide swath of users across many industries as more and more parties realise the tangible benefits of using PLUG.